


in the dream i don't tell anyone, i'm afraid to wake you up

by somethingradiates



Category: Justified
Genre: Alternate Universe - Inception, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-23 14:14:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3771304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingradiates/pseuds/somethingradiates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>in these dreams it’s always you:</i>
  <br/>
  <i>the boy in the sweatshirt,</i>
  <br/>
  <i>the boy on the bridge, the boy who always keeps me</i>
  <br/>
  <i>from jumping off the bridge.</i>
</p><p>an inception au in which raylan givens is an extractor and boyd crowder is the shade that will never, never let him go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the dream i don't tell anyone, i'm afraid to wake you up

Nobody looks at Raylan Givens and thinks, _extractor_ , or _architect_ , or _genius_ , and he wears it like a goddamn shield, wraps it around his shoulders like a well-worn coat. No matter where he goes - and he goes everywhere, has been everywhere, knows Islamabad like Rabat-Salé like Bogotá like Lexington - his accent hangs off his words like slow-dripping honey, easy and friendly. 

_It's an identifying goddamn mark,_ Art tells him once, frustrated enough that he slips into his _own_ Georgia drawl. 

_It's a warning,_ Raylan says, and doesn't elaborate. He doesn't need to argue because he's not wrong, and so he doesn't, and it frustrates Art more than if he had bickered back in the first place. 

( _They're calling you_ the southerner _now,_ Rachel told him once - over the phone, while she was in Seattle, tucked away in the fog and rain and cool, where she likes it best. She works where she's comfortable, and their team has to pay to get her to come back to Kentucky and its shitkicker hollers, but she's worth what they give and more. She could charge three times as much and she knows it, but Raylan thinks she likes the change, sometimes. _Like you're a paperback cowboy. Or in a Stephen King book._

 _Are they,_ Raylan had said distantly. _How about that._ )

\---- ---- ----

"Not that I give a shit," Loretta says one morning, "but is there a reason he don't go down with us?"

Tim's taking a long drink of his coffee when she asks - Raylan brought it for everybody and he got too much goddamn sugar in Tim's, like usual, and by now Tim's pretty sure he does it on purpose just to see if he can get him to bitch about it so Raylan can call him a pansy and tell him to drink his goddamn coffee like a normal person. Only now he ain't thinking about his coffee, and Loretta's watching him like he should have answered her question about five minutes ago. 

"No," he says, and goes back to double-checking her blueprints.

\---- ---- ----

Loretta is brittle like sugar glass, prefaces half the shit that comes out of her mouth with _not that I give a shit_ or _it don't matter, but -_ , and it's hard for any of them to ignore that Raylan takes a shine to her. That she's practically a little Raylan, sketching out dream-worlds with her peasant hands and her brain too big for Harlan, for Kentucky, for Appalachia, only maybe her scars are on the inside instead of criss-crossed across her back.

But none of them will ask. Whatever her shit is, it don't leak over into her builds, and that's all that matters. 

She don't call out their double standard, either, and that helps her case considerably.

\---- ---- ----

Raylan only takes her under once, when he's trying to get her onto his team. Tim hooks them up, never says a word to Raylan about whether or not he _should_ \- they don't have an architect, not after Raylan finally drove Winona cleanly away, and _has to_ outweighed _should_ a damn long time ago. _Prove you can do it,_ Loretta had said, and there had been a skittish hope in her voice that none of them had expected, not even Ava, who had been the one tasked with hunting her down proper in the first place. _Show me how you do it. Maybe I ain't even what you want._

They've heard enough about the spindly little girl working freelance for legbreaker dream-thieves in Harlan County to know she's _exactly_ what they want, but Raylan decides to humor her anyway, pretends he's gaining trust he knows probably doesn't or can't exist. Maybe he misses it. Maybe he don't want to think about it.

\---- ---- ----

_You know better,_ Boyd whispers. _Don't you build it off a memory. No matter how good that memory is. I taught you better, boy. You know better._ Raylan doesn't know if it's real or if it's a dream, but he can feel Boyd's breath against his neck, his lips against his ear. Feel his fingers sketching out buildings and roads and dreams against his back.

It's real enough when Raylan's scrubbing at the side of his neck in the morning, water hot enough to scald and leave his skin sore. He feels like he can't breathe. Maybe he can't. His chest feels like it's collapsing in on itself and every time he breathes in it _hurts_ and maybe he finally got him, cracked his sternum and spread his ribs for the goddamn birds, and when he finally uncurls his fingers from where they're wrapped around the sink they ache bone-deep. 

(It's real.)

\---- ---- ----

Ava hears Raylan say _fuck you_ like he's spitting cottonmouth poison out of his mouth, coldly furious and _hurt_. She hasn't heard him sound like that in a long time, and almost never towards Tim - never towards her, never towards Loretta. Sometimes he throws it at Art, but she's only heard that once. Loretta doesn't look up from her sketchbook, but her hand stills - like she's listening, not like she's scared. _Good girl,_ Ava thinks, not for the first time.

Tim says something that Ava can't hear, and it's quiet like he's trying to soothe Raylan down, like he's talking to a mean dog, only Tim ain't ever been good at _soothing_ , and she settles back in her chair, closes her folder. She's been staring at the pictures inside - a tall man, not handsome or ugly, not ginger or blond, not particularly stylish but not terribly out-of-fashion, either, and God damn it, why couldn't Raylan give her a mark that had _one_ fuckin' distinctive quality about him if he was going to make her forge a man in the first place - for the better part of two hours and her eyes are burning. 

_If you ain't ready,_ Tim's saying, once she listens a little closer, turns off her eyes and opens her ears. (All five senses, Mags had told her once, a long time ago, sight ain't enough, touch ain't enough. You forge, you forge every last damn one of them.) _If he came back -_

 _This ain't about him,_ Raylan says, and it comes out while Tim's still talking, and that startles Ava into real attention. She hasn't heard this particular fight in a long time, years, maybe, and Loretta ain't heard it at all. Ava is suddenly painfully sure that she don't want her to. 

"I need a smoke," she says suddenly, maybe a little too loud, and neither Tim or Raylan seem to hear her because neither of them shut their goddamn traps but Loretta looks up, at that. She's got her hair pulled back away from her face, still in the ponytail Ava had tied it up in earlier that night. She'd gone still under Ava's hands like a spooked horse, just let her do what she wanted, and Ava had wondered for just a moment if it was apprehension or something a little more threatening. She hadn't been able to decide. "C'mon, girl, keep me company." 

Loretta follows, but just barely.

\---- ---- ----

"It wasn't his daddy," Loretta says, like she's answering a question Tim never asked.

Tim doesn't bother with _what_ or _pardon me_ , just looks at her sidelong and waits for her to keep going. She takes too long, because she's just as contrary as her mentor (and ain't that funny, Raylan Givens being somebody's _mentor_ \- well, it's either funny or terrifying), but she does it eventually. 

"Whoever y'all were arguing about the other night." She's smoking one of Ava's cigarettes, sitting perched on the windowsill like a bird. She took the screen out when they first found this place, a run-down warehouse with barely enough electricity to power a PASIV, let alone their labs, but Art had it up and running inside a week, so Tim can't complain much about aesthetics. Well, he can, he supposes, and does, but that's beside the point. "You said, _if he came back_." 

She shrugs one skinny shoulder. She's wearing Ava's plaid jacket and she's swimming in it, looks more sixteen than twenty. Fourteen, maybe. Her hair's pin-straight down her back and swinging in curtains around her face and it makes her look like a damn seventh-grader. Sure as shit like she shouldn't be holding a cigarette. "When he took me under that first time - I knew where we went. Cabin up by Bulletville. Real sunny, green grass, birds singin', all sorts of shit. But we was only there a few minutes before he - " 

She cuts herself off, shrugs again. "You seen him."

They had only been under - thirty seconds, maybe. Forty-five at most. Five minutes in dreamtime, half of one in meatspace. Raylan had come up shaking, apologized to Loretta, told her that it had been a long time. That he wasn't used to being under. It had been a stupid, easy lie, and she'd seen it immediately - Tim could see it, even if Raylan pretended not to - but at least she'd had the good sense not to say anything. He'd been sick in the bathroom, after, run the faucet as loud as it would go so he could pretend they didn't hear anything. 

_Cabin up by Bulletville,_ Tim thinks, hates that it means something to him even if he wasn't born and raised anywhere near dying Harlan and its coal dust, and then, _God damn it._

"I went through his shit," Loretta's saying, casual as anything. "Raylan ain't got much of a record, but his daddy does. All bullshit down in Harlan but never anything with - all this. Too dumb to get involved." She shrugs again, adds, "Mags didn't like him," like that explains everything. It irritates Tim that it almost does. 

"No," he agrees, too long after she said anything at all. He's already turned back to his books, highlighting a passage up near the top of the page in thick, even, fluorescent-yellow strokes. It'll piss Raylan off. He hates the yellow highlighters, buys Tim packs and packs of blue ones like an appeal to use them instead. Tim never does. "It wasn't his daddy." 

She waits, sits there watching him like a statue until her cigarette burns down between her fingers and she's got to stub it out on the wall, but he never offers anything else, and she never does ask.

\---- ---- ----

( _I'm sorry,_ Boyd says sometimes, low and tortured. Most of the time, that's when he turns Raylan's build - whatever it is, whether it's Cairo or Delhi or fucking Bennett - into their bedroom. Sometimes it's him at their kitchen table with a cigarette and a cup of coffee, rawboned in the early sunlight - the sun's always just coming up, when Boyd takes over. He likes - liked - likes early mornings best, no matter how late he kept Raylan up.

It's dawn when he's in their bedroom, too. He's always in bed, sitting with his back up against the headboard. He's in jeans, sometimes, or pajama pants - flannel, not cotton - but he's never in what Raylan calls his _work clothes_ , black trousers and a button-up like a preacher. He's always wearing Raylan's shirt, the red plaid button-up, and most of the time it's unbuttoned, most of the time with a white tee-shirt underneath it. He's always barefoot. He's always got his knees up under his chin. He always looks small.

When he's apologizing, Raylan has come to realize, there's always a hole in the side of his head.)

**Author's Note:**

> please bear with me. i haven't seen inception in a very long time. 
> 
> inspired wholly by [this post](http://slashmyheartandhopetoporn.tumblr.com/post/116533406537/you-know-it-occurs-to-me-to-ask-knowing-ur-au), because there is less than no chance i would have ever considered writing an inception au otherwise.


End file.
